Malawi’s answer to The Container Store

When you live abroad, you find yourself noticing parallels between the world you’ve come from and the one you live in. The longer you are abroad, the more tenuous the parallels become. But there more far-fetched the parallel, the more glee is taken in the connection.

Case and point: the search for a plastic bucket yesterday brought me to what is affectionately know by the Peace Corps volunteers around here as the Malawi Container Store.

(Three quarters of the shop is visible in this photo)

While the modest size of the shop occupies about the same size area as the hanger display of the last Container Store I was in, the selection of various colour- and sized-receptacles is certainly impressive. The space is actually so well arranged, it makes the closet-organising section of The Container Store obsolete.

Congo’s plagues revisit

While it’s a beautiful clear Sunday in Lilongwe, things back in Congo aren’t quite as sunny. What was initially reported as an unidentified disease outbreak in my old home province of Kasai Occidental is now confirmed to be Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever. Friends in the province report 170 confirmed deaths and about twice as many infections. Realistically speaking from my former life in hemorrhagic fever health communications, Ebola is a self-limiting bug, striking in remote places and killing most of its victims before they have a chance to pass it on to too many others. That being said, it still leaves a morbid wake in its path.

On the political side, Fred reports that Laurent Nkunda in eastern Congo is still standing strong against integrating his private militia into the national army. The rebel leader’s latest move in the Kivus has been to destroy both the power supply and cell towers in the area, a new low even for Congolese trouble-makers. (Though their mobile service is probably still better than the mangy service Celtel provides around these parts).

In better news, UNICEF reports that child mortality in Malawi is on the decline; welcome news for a country that generally ranks somewhere near the bottom of the Human Development Index. The decline is attributed to a variety of child-targeted public health interventions including increased immunisation rates, better nutrition and clean water. It is the most basic changes that can have the most impact in this corner of the globe.

Reflections on dessication

The air is dry here. So dry that the hairs in my nose stand at attention when I inhale. So dry that the skin on my cheeks feels taut a few minutes after putting on lotion. Still two months left before the rains. I remember Kinshasa, where my skin, my bathtowel, the air couldn’t absorb a drop more. Each breath was dense and weighty and thick with the constant perspiration of the jungle.

I met up with a group at a bar the other night. I chatted with a woman who’s ‘yaah’ slid as no one’s but a South African’s does. She’s been in Malawi most of her life. Her daughter’s going into secondary school this year. She doesn’t look much older than I am; I realise she’s probably not.

The roads here are narrow and unlit, the drivers slow and absent. There is no fury, no honking, no outrage, no rush. Side roads remain unnamed. The pace is consistent but not mindful. The colors are faded but the sky itself is sharpened by the sun, which turns fiery pink each evening as it slips through the dust to the horizon.

Enter: The Warm Heart of Africa

This is what I remember:

Riding up the escarpment from Nkhata Bay in the back of a pickup with 13 other people, a few sacks of maize and a stack of jerry cans; eating corn bread and chili for Christmas dinner; reciting the prologue to Shakespeare’s Henry V while waiting for a hitch; seeking shelter from a rainstorm in the Chikangawa Forest fire tower hut only to find a very surprised Malawian staring down four white girls.

It was the middle of my first full year in Africa and I’d gone to spend the holidays (and the rainy season) with a friend just beginning her Peace Corps stint in northern Malawi. Next week, I will land in Lilongwe, 1400 miles from my last residence in Kinshasa, DR Congo, to stay for awhile.

A country of nearly 13 million, Malawi is about 5% the size of my previous home though about as poor with an annual per capita income of US$160. In fact, the IMF lists Malawi as the second poorest country globally. Malawi is however a lot more stable than poor old Congo and has roads enough to make the places outside the capital more accessible than the Congolese equatorial forests. I hope to be spending much of my free time at Lake Malawi, which spans the majority of the eastern border of this landlocked country in southeastern Africa.

Stay tuned for more tales from the Warm Heart of Africa.